I haven't setup any of the new Nest cameras, they REMOVED bluetooth? Completely non-sensical.
The new Nest app on the phone is just now, finally reaching feature parity years and years later and its still not fully there. The 1080p debacle is terrible as well, they also compress the hell out of video now, it feels far worse than when I first got my cameras years ago (presumably to save on the storage space I'm paying quite a bit for).
It's funny, you rarely know the moment a company goes off the rails but I know exactly when it happened for me, for Dropcam.
I was out to dinner a year or so ago and all of us who had Dropcams got emails from nest about needing to migrate to nest accounts, and found that:
A) our access to our camera's was completely cut-off
B) the migration process was completely broken, at first we thought just on mobile but it still didn't work when I got back to a computer, it took a few DAYS before I could migrate my account and access my cameras again.
This was terrible, I was 1000 miles from home and unable to access any of my cameras, I completely lost faith in the company at that moment and I know all of my friends did too.
Bluetooth LE for setup was not removed from the camera. Nest Cams and Dropcam Pro's can still be set up via Bluetooth LE via the Nest app.
Setting up cameras was removed from the (un-maintained) Dropcam App, to encourage users to migrate to the Nest app, which has more ongoing development.
The video on cameras is no more compressed than it ever was. I know it can feel worse, but nothing has changes there.
Whoa, this must be relatively recent. As recently as 6 months ago, the instructions on your website explicitly said that if you had a Dropcam you had to plug into USB. I desperately tried to find another option to no avail.
There is a distinction between original Dropcam/Dropcam HD setup and Dropcam Pro setup -- may be part of the confusion? Dropcam Pro had BLE setup, previous versions did not and require USB setup.
iirc there were some iot webcams with publicly hacked streams up on a website. either way, removing bt had to be security related.
that said, it is a core component, and basically the innovation/disruption if you even want to call it that, that the conpany was providing. i mean without a clean wireless interface, its basically a webcam/thermostat ect on a hone depot timer
The new Nest app on the phone is just now, finally reaching feature parity years and years later and its still not fully there. The 1080p debacle is terrible as well, they also compress the hell out of video now, it feels far worse than when I first got my cameras years ago (presumably to save on the storage space I'm paying quite a bit for).
It's funny, you rarely know the moment a company goes off the rails but I know exactly when it happened for me, for Dropcam.
I was out to dinner a year or so ago and all of us who had Dropcams got emails from nest about needing to migrate to nest accounts, and found that:
A) our access to our camera's was completely cut-off B) the migration process was completely broken, at first we thought just on mobile but it still didn't work when I got back to a computer, it took a few DAYS before I could migrate my account and access my cameras again.
This was terrible, I was 1000 miles from home and unable to access any of my cameras, I completely lost faith in the company at that moment and I know all of my friends did too.